by Liz Isaacson
She’d lived through a winter in Jackson Hole, so she had plenty of warm clothing.
“Wait for me?” she asked. “I can help.”
“Sure.”
She put on wool socks and stuffed her feet in her designer boots. She already wore her fur-lined leggings, and she grabbed her scarf before heading back to the mudroom for her coat and gloves.
“Aren’t you cute?” Beau leaned against the wall and watched her approach.
They’d never really talked about what they were doing out at the lodge—besides the legal work, obviously.
Lily actually liked the non-label. She just knew she just didn’t want to be a client or a mistake.
But did she want to be his girlfriend?
“Thanks,” she said, tipping up onto one toe and doing a little spin. “But, seriously, it’s supposed to snow soon, and we need to get your precious horses ready.” She grinned at him, glad when he helped her put her coat on and then kept his arm around her.
Lily still wasn’t entirely sure she knew what she was doing, but she felt a measure of happiness walking down the sidewalk with Beau that she hadn’t experienced in a long time.
“So how did you meet Kent?” Beau asked, startling Lily out of her bubble of joy.
“Oh.” She blew out her breath. She’d anticipated him asking her some questions about her adult life, and she searched for how she felt about sharing specific things with him.
“You don’t have to tell me.”
She tightened her arm around his waist as she felt him drifting away from her. “I will. I want to.”
But she took several steps before she said, “Kent was a very charming man. He was a bartender when I met him.”
“Oh,” Beau said, his voice full of surprise. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
“Yeah, he worked in a sports bar in Las Vegas, and he could bet on the games while he served drinks.” Lily gave a mirthless laugh and shook her head. “Apparently, I thought that was charming.”
“How old were you when you met him?”
“Twenty-six,” she said. “We got married four years later. That lasted five years.” She couldn’t believe she’d given almost a decade of her life—nine of her best years—to Kent.
“The initial divorce seemed amicable,” he said, his voice a touch too light to be casual.
“It was,” she said. “He asked for things, and I gave him everything he asked for.” A hint of bitterness crept into her voice, but she didn’t care. She was allowed to be bitter that some of her hard earned money and fame went to Kent every month.
“He didn’t work while we were married. He lived in my house in California, and racked up bills on who-knows-what.”
Beau opened the door to the stable, and she stepped through first. The scent of hay and horses met her nose, and Lily actually liked it. She never would’ve pegged herself as someone who wanted to be around unpredictable animals and all the smells they made, but Beau’s horses brought Lily a sense of comfort she’d been missing in her life.
“I think I probably know,” Beau said, bringing the door closed behind him and making the light dimmer. “But what happened?”
“It was the infidelity that finally pushed me over the edge,” she said, turning to face him. “And his complete unwillingness to stop or go to counseling.” She shrugged, though the reason for her divorce still stung pretty deeply. “I want to say that I tried, you know?”
Beau nodded and reached up to cradle her face. “Yeah, I know.”
“Have you ever been married?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Oh, don’t start with the ma’am stuff.” She swatted at him, and the tender moment between them evaporated. “Just because I’m six years older than you doesn’t mean I’m ancient.”
Beau laughed, the sound booming and wonderful and filling the rafters of the barn. Lily joined him, leaning into him until he put his arms around her. They sobered together, and he brushed her hair off the side of her face again.
“I like you,” he said, his voice dipping into the husky range.
A bolt of fear hit her, but she managed to stay still and in his arms. “I like you too, Beau.” She smiled up at him and he leaned down and pressed his lips to her forehead.
A wonderful spray of stars spread from where his mouth had been, and she kept smiling as he wrapped his arms all the way around her and held her close to his heartbeat.
Daisy woke Lily the next day, but she stayed in bed and listened to the dog bark and bark and bark. Beau’s voice joined the fray, and he didn’t sound happy about the early morning wake-up call.
But Lily didn’t mind. She’d lived most of her life backward, with late nights and waking after noon. But in the year she’d taken off from her music career, she’d learned about the simple things like watching the sun rise and lying in bed for a few moments while the night gave way to day.
She loved soft moments like these, and she took several minutes to enjoy them. Then she reached over to her nightstand and picked up her phone. She’d been using a new email address every week to contact her sisters and let them know she was okay. She hadn’t given them any details about where she was, and she kept her messages short and with generic happenings like shopping or eating lunch with a friend that could happen in any city in any country.
So she hadn’t told them about the horses, or Daisy, and definitely not about Beau. But this morning, as she thumbed out a new email for her sisters, she felt the loss of them way down in her soul. The three of them had spent so much time together over the years, and Lily hated that Kent had taken Vi and Rose from her too.
But all of that was about to change. She had a lawyer now, and he was going to help her get rid of Kent forever. She told all of that to her sisters and paused, wondering if she should mention that she’d started dating a man.
Too soon, she thought and sent the email without any indication that her life had changed all that much.
As she let the phone fall to her chest, she acknowledged that it had changed a lot. New place to live. New lawyer.
New boyfriend.
A smile curved her mouth, and Lily closed her eyes and fantasized about what it would be like to kiss a man like Beau Whittaker.
Sudden trepidation ran through her, because she hadn’t kissed a man in a very, very long time. And Beau was the kind of man who was the best at everything he did.
Eleven
Beau said, “Thank you, Charlie,” and hung up the phone. He burst into a standing position, a huge smile on his face. But Lily wasn’t in the office to celebrate with him.
They’d settled into a routine fairly early, and Beau knew he’d find her in the kitchen with Celia.
Lily had been at the lodge for about three weeks now, and she’d started getting cooking lessons from Celia every day that the older woman worked at the lodge.
She’d settled down around Graham and Laney, and had even met their kids without a problem. He often found her and Bree chatting, curled up in the couch with mugs of hot chocolate, too.
He entered the kitchen, his excitement over the news he’d just gotten close to exploding out of him. But the scent of sugar and butter and baking pie dough reminded him how Thanksgiving was only a few weeks away.
Celia leaned both of her forearms onto the counter and flipped a page in her cookbook. “Yep, here it is,” she said. “And yes, we need the buttermilk.”
Lily straightened from the fridge, a carton of the liquid in her hand. She caught sight of Beau, and he saw the slight fumble in her step.
“Great news,” he said, his own grin stretching his face so wide he felt like a clown.
“Yeah?” Lily set the buttermilk on the counter next to Celia. “What kind of news?”
“The judge threw out the alimony suit.”
Lily squealed and rushed around the counter, laughing as she came. He caught her around the waist and twirled her, but in the tight space, her foot hit one of the legs of the barstool.
“Th
at’s great,” she said, pure joy on her face. Beau wanted to solve all of her problems, and euphoria filled him as she put both hands on his shoulders and looked up at him.
“One down,” he said, brushing her hair back, the thought of kissing her pressing forward in his mind until he couldn’t think of anything else.
Celia cleared her throat, and Beau realized he’d started to lean down toward Lily as if he’d kiss her with an audience present.
Foolishness raced through him, and they jumped apart as if Celia was their mother. She wore a fond look on her face, her eyes deep and knowing.
Beau ducked his head, wishing he had his cowboy hat on so he could hide his eyes. “Anyway, I’m done for today. I’m going to go riding.”
“All right.” Lily moved back around the counter and joined Celia on the other side. “Celia’s teaching me how to make coconut cream pie and pecan pie.”
“For Thanksgiving,” Celia said. “And your mother is coming out to the lodge tonight for dinner, remember?”
Beau did remember, and he nodded. “She’s bringing Jason?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And what about you?” he asked.
Celia turned away from him, her voice straying into the higher range when she asked, “What about me?”
Beau leaned against the counter, enjoying himself maybe a little too much. But Celia had teased him plenty over the last few weeks, and she could take some of her own medicine.
“Oh, come on, Miss Celia. I heard the ladies at church talking about you goin’ out with someone.” Beau had been going to church with Graham, same as always. Lily stayed home to keep the risk of someone knowing about her presence at Whiskey Mountain Lodge as low as possible.
He hadn’t heard even a whisper about her, and he was satisfied that she’d been able to move in and feel comfortable without a single person in Coral Canyon knowing about it.
Celia did all the shopping for them, or Bree added a few items Lily needed when she went into town to supply the lodge.
Beau had gotten her a new phone and told the clerk it was to keep in the stables. Boy, he’d gotten a puzzled look for that, but in the end, Roy had simply said, “Must be nice to have so much money you can buy a cell phone for a horse.”
“Thirteen horses,” Beau clarified, a smile stuck to his face as he paid and left with the new device.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Okay. Guess I’ll ask Agnes Duffin.”
Celia spun around, her eyes flashing. “You will do no such thing.”
Beau knew Celia and Agnes hadn’t seen eye-to-eye on the Halloween carnival years ago, and he simply widened his grin. “Maybe you should invite your boyfriend up for dinner too.”
“It’s….” Celia exchanged a look with Lily, who shrugged.
“Might as well tell him. Beau has a way of figuring things out just by looking.”
Beau stared at her, wondering if that were really true. She thought he didn’t have to work to figure things out? Though he felt he could read people decently well, he definitely did some investigative work in order to get the results he wanted.
After all, he’d seen the name assigned to the alimony case, and it had only taken two phone calls and one Internet search to know that Judge Tomlinson had a history of ruling in favor of shorter alimony periods if the party requesting the money was unemployed.
And Kent happened to be unemployed, something Beau put as their first counter against increasing the payments or lengthening the time Lily had to pay.
“You know about her boyfriend?” he asked Lily.
“Women talk while they cook,” Celia said, stepping around the counter and planting her palm against Beau’s chest. “You go ride your horses.”
“What’s his name?” Beau fell back a step though he could’ve easily resisted the pressure against his chest.
“None of your business,” she said. “It’s not serious enough for me to be talking about him like he’s my boyfriend. When it is, I’ll let you know.”
Beau chuckled and shook his head, finally moving toward the mud room of his own volition. “Fine,” he said. “But for the record, I think it’s great you’re seeing someone.”
His mother had been back in the dating scene for about a year too, and Andrew had struggled with it the most. He seemed to have come around now, though, which made family get-togethers less awkward.
He ducked out of the house and was greeted by the whipping wind and the threat of rain. He glanced up into the sky and whispered, “Thank you for sending me Lily Everett,” as he continued toward the stables.
Thanksgiving approached, and Beau worked tirelessly on Lily’s cases. He’d submitted three more rebuttals and all they could do now was wait.
It seemed he was doing a lot of that lately. Waiting for the first snow. Waiting for the responses form clerks and paralegals and courts that he needed. Waiting for the pie to finish cooling.
Waiting to kiss Lily.
Something powerful existed between them, and Beau was enjoying it. But he also had almost a sixth sense about her, and he could tell she was not ready to take their relationship out of the hand-holding category.
Honestly, he wasn’t sure if he was ready either. So he spent a lot of time waiting, and thinking, and analyzing—and not just court cases.
“Movie night,” Lily proclaimed one morning when she brought in his cup of coffee.
He looked up from his laptop. “What?” He accepted the coffee from her and took a sip. It was too hot and too bitter, but he didn’t say anything. He kept sugar packets in his top drawer, and when she wasn’t looking, he’d pour in a couple.
She had been getting better in the kitchen, but he’d learned she simply liked her coffee more bitter than he did.
“Movie night.” She sat across from him, her pale blue eyes watching his. “You said you’d go get pizza and we’d watch something in the theater room with Andrew and Becca.”
“Did I?”
“Beau.” She shook her head, a smile touching her mouth for a moment. “I like all the meats with pineapple on my pizza.”
“I know,” he said. “You’ve told me like a thousand times.”
“I have not.”
“Yes, you have.” He went back to his computer screen. “Movie night on Friday. Remember how you’re getting pizza on Friday? I want to watch Out to Sea on Friday.”
He glanced up and grinned at her. “I haven’t forgotten.”
Lily sighed, her smile fully forming and looking a little soft around the edges. “I guess I’m just excited to see some new people,” she said.
“You don’t like people.” Beau leaned back in his chair and studied her.
“I like people just fine,” she said. “I just don’t trust them not to tell their aunt that they met me. And then their aunt puts it on Facebook, and then the next thing I know, Kent is standing on the doorstep.”
Beau started nodding halfway through her explanation. “I get it. Becca says she has something for you to sign, but that she’s willing to say she got the autograph at one of your signings overseas.”
Lily nodded, her lips pressing into a tight line. “She’s texted me a bunch of times. She seems nice.”
“There’s no one nicer than Becca,” Beau agreed. And yet Lily still looked a little nervous.
“So I’ll get the pizza at seven and we’ll start the movie at eight.”
“That’s the plan.” She stood, having stopped hanging out in the office with him while he worked. She might go do something with Bree, or whip up scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast, and a few times, Beau had caught her out in the stables.
She still didn’t want to ride, but she did seem to like the horses. She’d also measured the front window and ordered all the supplies she needed to transform it into a stained glass masterpiece she would not allow him to see.
“My metal work will be here tomorrow,” she said as if reading his mind. “And then I can start on the window.”<
br />
“I can’t wait to see it.” He grinned up at her, and she beamed down at him, and Beau wondered if he could lunge to his feet and kiss her right now.
But he didn’t want their first kiss to be a quick, fumbling affair. He wanted to take his time with her, not make sudden moves.
“There’s peach delight for breakfast,” she said.
Beau’s stomach growled and his mouth watered. “I’ll be right in. I just need to finish this email.”
“All right.” She let her fingers trail along his and then she walked out. Beau watched her go, wondering if maybe, just maybe, he could kiss her that night during the movie.
Don’t be stupid, he warned himself. His brother would be there, and Andrew was far less subtle than Graham. Sure, he could spin any tale for the newspapers, but sometimes he just told things how they were too.
“Maybe after the movie,” Beau muttered to himself. “After everyone goes home except you and Lily.”
With that possibility in his mind, he went back to the boring, monotonous work of trying to find a case where a spouse didn’t get half of the assets in a divorce.
Twelve
Lily spent a few hours outside every day, her only relief from the walls of the lodge. Yes, they were beautiful walls, with great art hanging on them. Gorgeous hardwood floors. Wonderful company when Celia was there, and even when she wasn’t Lily enjoyed talking with Bree and just hanging out with Beau.
But she had not left the property in almost five weeks, and something gnawed at her from the inside out.
Beau left often—every week for church, and at least once or twice on other days of the week. Tonight, he’d get to go get pizza, see that there was a world beyond Whiskey Mountain Lodge, the stables, and the towering Teton Mountains in the distance.
Lily had taken a liking to a butter-colored horse named Dandelion, and she took the reins Beau had taught her how to put around the animal’s neck and said, “Come on, girl.”
